


The Rise of the Phoenix

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Disney Movies, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fluff, Implied Relationships, Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6089772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Anyway, enough woolgathering.  Twenty-fifth century Disney movie premiere, here we come."  The Doctor holds open the TARDIS door for her, and Rose precedes him inside, making a beeline for the wardrobe room, so that she can find something suitable for the future of the red carpet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rise of the Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Disney challenge over at Then There's Us. The Rise of the Phoenix is also a fairy tale mentioned in some of my other works. It is an old Gallifreyan story the Doctor's always been fond of.

"Typical Disney, probably," the Doctor says, of the theater they've just passed, the one Rose has gotten him to agree to come back to at a specific time.  
  
Rose grins and tosses out a favorite quote: "'Far off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise'?"  
  
The Doctor laughs and tightens his arm around her shoulder. "Brilliant!" he says, with his best bright grin. It doesn't matter what the Doctor looks like, not so much, Rose just really loves making him smile.  
  
"What, you think you're the only one?" She's snickering at him, wondering if he'll place what she meant or if she'll have to clue him in. For a genius, he's not half daft, really.  
  
"What?" he says, looking artfully and delightfully confused.  
  
"'Sorry, that's The Lion King,'" she quotes by way of a reminder. The Doctor's freckles blend in a bit better when he blushes, she's noticed.  
  
After a long moment, about half a block, he collects himself and starts to explain. "Well, that touched it off, really, or the Little Mermaid did, I guess. A new Golden Age for Disney, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and about a half-dozen lesser known works of the period. The next Golden Age started when someone found the old cells for Heidi in one of the vaults. Masterpiece, that one, music by... erm, someone important. Lyrics by... ah, someone else. Broadway adaptation by.. hmm."  
  
"By?"  
  
"By yet another famous person I can't seem to recall at the moment," the Doctor says with a baffled looking shake of his head. "Ah well, it'll come to me."  
  
Rose laughs. "Running for our lives six planets from now, an' you'll suddenly announce 'Eminem' and I won't know why?"  
  
The Doctor scratches his head. "Wasn't him, I don't think. Won't be... wasn't." He looks off into the distance, a concentrating frown on his face.  
  
"What's wrong?" Rose asks, stopping on the sidewalk to allow him a moment. "It'll come to you, don't worry."  
  
"Oh, it's not that, I just never paid as much attention to that one as the others. Sweet girl and a taciturn old grandfather who kept her isolated from everyone... It hit a bit close to home at the time."  
  
There it is again, a tiny bit of his history, wrapped up and well-buried in a random cultural reference so that she can't be sure she can pick it out, not without treading on tender things where she's got no right. "What I remember of Heidi is that she loved her grandfather and the mountain and the boy so much that she nearly died when she had to leave them," Rose says softly, watching his face while he watches something she cannot see.  
  
"What happens when she has to choose between her grandfather and the boy?" the Doctor says, his voice no more than a whisper.  
  
She doesn't know how to answer that, doesn't know if there even is an answer, so she just shifts her grip on his hand, tightening it, to remind him that she is there for him, whether she is enough or not. She's been telling him that for a long time now, and she doesn't know if it's helping, but she's not giving up, on this or on him, not ever.  
  
The Doctor slowly blinks away his dark yesterday, looking down at their joined hands. His smile comes up gradually, the one that comes with the soft, special look in his eyes, the look Rose is starting to suspect is just for her. "Anyway, enough woolgathering. Twenty-fifth century Disney movie premiere, here we come."  
  
He holds open the TARDIS door for her, and Rose precedes him inside, making a beeline for the wardrobe room, so that she can find something suitable for the future of the red carpet.  
  


*?*

She can't believe the dress the TARDIS has set out for her, can't help but think her mum would call the thing a handkerchief. Admittedly it's too sparkly, but Rose knows for a fact that there are handkerchiefs in the Doctor's pocket with more fabric than this shiny, tiny thing.

She stares at herself in the mirror, worrying at her lip as she tries to make sure the hem hides everything. Her last Doctor wouldn't have let her out of the TARDIS in this. He would have blustered and thundered and threatened and tried to pretend to be all paternal, but Rose would be convinced that was him eyeing her arse as she turned to sulk away from him and change. It would be enough to mollify her one more night.

Her current Doctor... well, she isn't sure, but he let her parade around dressed like a French maid without turning a hair, so who knows. He does, no one else. She considers the glass-slipper-looking strappy stilettos that came with the dress and makes up her mind. Might be time to figure him out, and she can call this a date in her mind if she wants to do. He lets her, most of the time, after all.

When she arrives in the console room, she finds he's bowed to red carpet tradition as well, and that formal wear hasn't changed all that much over the ages. The tuxedo is black, of course, and he's even conceded to black trainers with it, so she can't complain, not that she'd want to when he's standing there looking hot enough to cook with and good enough to eat.

Besides, if she's not terribly mistaken, it's him who is having to scrape his jaw off the grating, so she's definitely won something.

"Where's the rest of it?" he asks, and she almost expects a Northern accent to match that familiar growl.

"Don't ask me," Rose answers hotly. "Your ship picked it out!"

"Out of what? A porn movie?"

"You're the one with the mental link," Rose sing songs. She heads to the door while he sputters incoherently behind her.

Before she reaches the door, he's there in front of her. "There's no talking you out of this dress?" he questions intently.

She almost says, 'no, but you can take me out of it some other way'. Almost, but she stops herself, bites her tongue, shakes her head firmly. "No," she manages at last, and it's only slightly squeaky.

The Doctor squares his shoulders. "Right then," he says. "Don't even think of wandering off. I'm not letting you out of my sight." He looks the dress over again, and Rose feels a little thrill because, for the first time since he changed, she's sure she can see something in his eyes. "Since there's so much of you in sight," he mutters grumpily. Rose wonders if she was meant to hear that.

The Doctor fetches a top hat, which must be in fashion, as she's never seen him wear a hat before. He taps it onto his head with a neat little white tipped cane, and the whole effect makes him look like something out of a movie. He shakes his head at her, helps her on with an elegant silk wrap that's next to a short white wool scarf on the railing. Rose accepts his offered arm, tucking her handbag neatly in the other arm, and lets him escort her. With glee, she thinks that they must look like a proper lady and gentleman, and it's just brilliant.

*?*

They're photographed on the red carpet, right up against the gorgeous background of a towering cartoon fire. Rose thinks she sees animals in the flames, and the Doctor tries to figure out what fairy tale this particular Disney flick owes for an origin. Rose suggests Harry Potter, and the Doctor denies it, claiming that the Harry Potter series is still in print to this day.

They stroll across the theater like they own the place, which means that Rose isn't allowed to stop and gawk at the chandeliers made to look like a million crystal tear drops floating around a glowing central spire. It's all a bit fantastic, and she's starting to think this is the fanciest occasion she and the Doctor have ever attended.

They hover around the reception and cocktails, and listen to future famous people chatter and brag. Rose puts on her best "Dame Rose" routine and mingles neatly on the outskirts. They're brilliant and beautiful and she supposes they're just like celebrities have always been. She finds them rather silly within minutes and dull before a half hour's up. Even the Doctor's almost completely fed up with them by the time everyone's inside the theater itself, finding their seats.

"I want popcorn," Rose complains.

The Doctor laughs. "Me too."

The lights go dim, and the vast screen at the front of the theater seems to burst into flame. It's completely inclusive, animated but so lifelike. It feels real, almost realer than anything she's ever felt. She doesn't know how they've achieved this effect, but Rose is thrilled and stunned at once.

The credits list two men, two women, introduce a third, show a producer, a director, a wholly classic Disney credit, and then the flames explode outward. In blazing letters, five stories high, the screen proclaims this to be "Rise of the Phoenix".

The applause is tremendous.

*?*

She had a smile that could melt a winter's day, a heart filled with the kind of light that could brighten midnight. Her mother and father doted on her, as she was their only child, their pink and yellow girl. With big dark eyes and a wide red smile, she had a heart that seemed to sing where ever she went.

Her father died when she was just a baby, and she grew up with just her mother and her truest friend. They called her a dreamer and, as she grew, they called her a beauty as well. All the same, no one called her anything more than ordinary.

But Rose Wolf had never told anyone her one great secret, and it was that secret that would change the world.

"He's gone away for to stay a little while..." Rose sang the old melody only when she was alone. Her mother did not approve of anything that wasn't firmly nailed to the ground, which left both singing and daydreaming right out.

It also omitted the fantastic drawing that Rose worked on whenever no one was around. She had been creating it since she was very small, adding sections at a time in crayon or in pencil, in paint and pen and dye. It covered the entire wall of Rose's small bedroom, and featured a fantastic, beautiful, alien place, and a vast menagerie of characters.

More than anything Rose's mother doubted now, the woman truly doubted 'happily ever after'. She would never, therefore, have approved of the effort that had gone into Rose's artwork, nor the love she bestowed on it, nor the very central character at the heart of the vast and chaotic melee.

The character was a young man. Over time he'd evolved from a flat black and white sketch to a nearly life-like image, fair of face and finely built, with blue eyes that flashed and popped right off the canvas. He had a haughty expression on a proud, thin, and attractive face, and his alabaster pale skin was made all the more remarkable by his shock of shoulder-length, jet black hair. He was every bit as beautiful as Rose, and it was obvious from the beginning that she loved this fantasy boy every bit as much as the real people in her life.

Then came the morning when Rose turned sixteen, and on that morning her mother found her secrets. "You need to keep your head out of the clouds! Your useless father was a dreamer, too, and look what happened to him. You keep on like this, you'll be just like him - dead in a ditch somewhere with nothing to show for your life."

"But... but you said my father was a genius, a great man..."

"We're all allowed to have fantasies!" the sad-eyed mother protested. "But that's all they are, all they ever can be: fantasies. And then we have to live in the real world. There are no blue-eyed fairy kings in the real world!"

"He's a lord," Rose protested. "Not a king, a lord..."

"Well, whatever he is, he's about to be clean linen again..." And Rose's mother unhooked the work from Rose's wall, and balled it up. "Stay here in the real world with me, Rose, where it's safe." And she walked out of Rose's room with the picture Rose had spent a lifetime making bundled up in her arms with dirty clothes and Rose's dreams.

Rose, being the tough, strong-willed girl that she was, didn't collapse to her knees or throw herself down on her bed to sob out her grief. She fled the room, fled the little house altogether, and ran out into the maze of the city she lived in instead.

She sang a song about how she longed to have her dreams, how real life couldn't even be real without dreams to make it worth it. Her song began with a plea for understanding and ended with a plea for freedom. It only ended when it was interrupted by a talking animal.

Her brief encounter with her one true friend, a tom cat who lived in the alleys around her home, warned Rose not to go into the warrens of the city. Things were getting more and more complicated by the day, and they were headed for a war, no mistake about that. She might meet one of the dangerous enemy if she ventured too far from her home. Rose waved her friend off and carried on into the city anyway, angry, sad, and determined to find her own way in the world at last.

Her determination didn't lead her to freedom, however. It led her instead to a dark, inescapable corner, surrounded on all sides by enemies creeping closer, ever closer. Rose, never having seen such a thing in her life, didn't know what to do at all, and was frozen in shock and fear.

A light brightened the world around her, a brilliant flame of a light, and then, suddenly, a hand touched hers, tugging. Rose dared to open her eyes just long enough to get the impression of vivid blue eyes and burning shadows. Then, a lovely voice spoke, just one word, and Rose's whole life might has well have begun again. "Run!"

*?*

"This is looking a bit familiar," Rose Tyler whispers.

The Doctor, clutching to her hand with knuckles white in the darkness of the theater, nods slowly. Rose can watch his adam's apple bob as he swallows hard, and she finds herself wondering if he knew about this.

When the boy on screen introduces himself with a shockingly familiar introduction (though he does give a rather normal name, if Phoenix can be said to be normal), Rose sees him start. "Did you..." she whispers.

He looks down at her, shaking his head. On screen, the maze Rose Wolf wandered into bursts into flame. "Not yet?" he whispers, but it sounds like a question, not an answer.

After this, the two characters rush headlong, hand-in-hand, in the Phoenix Lord's magic boat. Rose Wolf's friend the cat can't come with them, and her mother wants the girl to stay, but they are young, Rose Wolf and the Phoenix Lord, they're young and they're desperate. They're racing through a quest of an adventure, searching for a key that unlocks a power that can end the age old war before it comes to Rose's city, before it can destroy anything more than it already has. Always the key is not where they look, because it has moved on, because it was never there.

Friends join them on this quest from time to time, Rose Wolf's talking cat, a brave and clever young man called Captain. Except for Captain, Rose Wolf and the Phoenix Lord are practically the only people they ever see after awhile. A little later after that, it becomes plain that Rose Wolf is the only actual person anywhere near this quest. Everyone else is royalty, divine, or impossible.

In a divergence from the Disney of Rose's memory, the two lovers marry before the happily ever after, not in her recognizable traditions, but in his vague and strange ones. Also in divergence, love's first kiss doesn't save them - it damns them completely.

Something in that magical moment alerts their terrible, invisible enemies who arrive with dark powers that bind. In that instant, the Phoenix Lord recognizes them. Their love duet isn't like so many others - it's a heart-breaking chorus about finding love and losing love and returning for love. (Rose actually knows the song, though the arrangement is new, and she catches the Doctor humming to it, so she supposes he's also finding it familiar). There's a glorious second kiss to distract the new bride and then the Phoenix Lord is sending her away while he goes to face the ancient evil that destroyed his people.

Rose Wolf finds herself alone in the grounded magic boat, hovering just next to her long abandoned home. Her friend and her mother are waiting for her, but her world has just ended and there is nothing that can console her grief.

"I'm getting that deja vu feeling again," Rose Tyler mutters, as Rose Wolf tells her friend that there's nothing left for her where she had lived her life for so long.

"Did you... you didn't... you'd've never told Mickey that." The Doctor looks alarmed and hopeful as once, terrified and lonely. His dark eyes are shining in the dim theater light.

She can't confess this - they've never talked about any of those horrible last hours when she lost him, before she lost him, when she knew she'd lost him, when she finally got him back. All she does, all she can do, is nod.

The Doctor stares at her, his eyes huge and full of something Rose is terrified to put a label on. There's a thought there, a heartbeat, that maybe, just maybe, it's finally time.

On screen, Rose Wolf has reached her wits' end. She knows there's an answer, someone she can talk to, if she can only reach the goddess that gave her husband his life. Rose Tyler stares, incredulous, as the Disney mother makes a decision, just like Jackie Tyler, to help her little girl, in spite of everything.

The Doctor makes a strangled noise, protest, disbelief, and something that sounds an awful lot like terrible affection. "Jackie'd never... she wouldn't..."

Rose is shaking in her fake glass slippers. "Just watch," she whispers. "Just... let's watch."

*?*

Rose Wolf found herself standing before Chaos, the night-jeweled, beautiful mother of the Phoenix Lord, a goddess in her own right, a power to be reckoned with. She had been imprisoned for such a very long time, and Her conception of reality was nothing like anything the girl could understand.

Rose couldn't even imagine what to say to Her, how to win Her trust and the help that only She could give. She was at a loss of what to do at all. Her words and her dreams had won her this far: she'd converted friends to fight their war, her husband to send her away, her friend and her mother to send her back. She changed the world, so far, changed everything around her to succeed in her husband's quest. And now... now it was time to change herself.

"Please," she whispered, dropping to her knees. "Please. I love him."

The goddess stepped into the girl, light and flame so brilliant that there was nothing for an instant but a yellow-white as bright as star fire. And when the flames were banked, cooling to a pure, insurmountable gold, there stood not two women but one enormous wolf.

The Phoenix Lord knew he had lost, knew that it was finally over, this war, and that he and everyone were doomed. He held his ground alone at the last as the invisible evil surrounded him. He seemed proud to meet his death this way, not surrendering but not killing any more.

He expected their weapons, prepared himself, and when the vast sheet of light came, he thought it was the end. But it wasn't. A wolf, a towering, fierce creature with dark bright eyes and a soul in flames stood there, between him and his death.

"I want you safe," the wolf said, in a voice that echoed with voices woven together all over the universe.

"What have you done!" the youth protested.

"I looked into the heart of time, and She looked into me."

"You have to stop this - it'll destroy you."

"The only one it will destroy is the destroyer."

"I cannot die," answered the evil leader, and the cloud of blackness managed to convey a very smug smirk in its words. "Attack." His minions flung themselves at the strange pair and just as quickly evaporated.

"You can't do this!" the Phoenix Lord argued, pleading with the wolf for reasons she could not understand.

"You are nothing, the Abomination!" the darkness agreed, which only made the Phoenix Lord more furious and confused.

"I create myself," the wolf said firmly, the dark eyes clearing of their strange fire. She looked right at the Lord, right into him.

"You're going to burn," he whispered, and sank to his knees next to the beautiful, powerful creature.

The wolf sat back, and threw back her great, shaggy head. "The war ends!" she commanded.

The enemy shrieked and screamed, fighting and throwing darkness to the very last, but the vast sheet of bright white flame overwhelmed the darkness, blotted out everything but the pair in the center of the fire. By the time the flames had coasted out to blast away all the shadows and burn them right out of the sky, the light around the wolf had dimmed considerably.

"You've done it!" the boy exclaimed in delighted surprise. "You've finished them all, now please let this go!"

"How can I?" the wolf whispered, falling weakly onto the floor. "I create life!"

"This is all my fault," the boy whispered, and he reached a hand to touch the wolf's paw.

As soon as paw met hand, her form blurred back into that of the Phoenix Lord's beautiful young wife. "Rose!" he said, gathering her close. "Oh, Rose, look at what I've done to you."

"Still taking the blame for everything," she teased weakly. "I chose this. I chose..."

"Oh, my love..."

"My head..."

"Come here."

"It's killing me..."

"It's time you see what I can do."

Their lips met for only the third time, the fairytale rule of threes making it the most powerful kiss yet. The firelight that cradled the girl began drifting, then pouring, then streaming into him. Eyes burning with a light brighter than anything seen so far, he lifted his love from the floor beneath her, and carried her to his ship, releasing them back into the stars they sailed.

"But it was death!" Rose Wolf protested when she awoke, watching in terror while her husband slowly smoldered.

"It was. It is. But not for you."

"But that's what I agreed - a life for a life." Her confusion seemed to only get worse.

"Yes, and it's what I agreed, too. My life, for yours."

"Don't go! My love, please..."

"The moment has been prepared for," he said softly, and then burst into a blinding storm of flame.

It expanded outward, ever outward, destroying everything it touched, until it came right to the end of Rose's nose. The flames licked out to caress her fair cheek, and then the fire collapsed as if pulled inside out. As the flames retreated, they left not destruction but new growth, bright lights, shining colors, clean edges. At the very end, there remained only a molten pillar.

Rose stepped closer. The pillar thrummed. She stepped closer again. Something strange seemed to happen as something fanned along the edges. One more step.

The pillar spread titanic wings, unfurling the closed form to reveal an impossibly beautiful bird. The creature flapped its wings, arched them toward heaven, and cried out a single, pure, heart-wrenching note.

Then it folded its wings, collapsing as it did, until there was nothing left but a pile of dust. A howl of misery escaped the girl as she flung herself toward her beloved.

Gold dust rose from the ash, then fell again, as if in a rhythm like breathing, but Rose Wolf didn't notice - she was too busy on her knees in the pile of ashes, tears streaming down her face in her agony.

A single tear caught the light of the stars and slowly fell like a crystal to the floor. The instant it touched the ash, there was a spark, and suddenly, a great wind, whirling upward toward the stars.

When Rose Wolf could look again, she saw that the shocking fire bird had coalesced into a young man, and that young man was beautiful, as her husband had been beautiful, was bright eyed as her husband had been bright eyed, was ginger as...

Confused, wild-eyed, and frightened, she whispered, "What's going on?"

*?*

"I officially resent the ending," the Doctor says, sulkily.

"What?" Rose, who has been watching the credits roll by in something of a daze, looks at him as if he's from another planet. He is, she knows that, but it's getting ridiculous.

He rakes his hands through his hair. "I said yes because this movie has the same title as a legend from my world."

Rose is even more baffled now, possibly more baffled than the Disney version, because she knows he's out to throw her for a loop - he shouldn't be so good at it. "I'm confused," she admits, because the truth is the only thing she's going to be able to say until her addled brain stops gibbering inside her skull.

"Rise of the Phoenix. It's a legend from Gallifrey."

Rose smiles. It's a very pretty word, the name of his world, and it's so rare that she hears it, and never outside of the TARDIS before. "It anything like this?" she wonders.

The Doctor looks thoughtful, then takes her hand and focuses solely on her, while everyone cheers everyone else as the credits roll their names. "It is. A young warrior is called away to war, leaving a young bride behind while he goes to meet the enemy. The rest is... shockingly like what you saw on the screen."

"But that was... it was a bit like us, too, wasn't it?"

The Doctor offers a look that isn't quite a pout. It's almost angry, as if he's convinced someone's been minding his business for him. "And I have no idea how this happened."

Rose has been having a good, if hair-raising time, so far, and she just isn't dressed for running for her life, not this time. "Were your lines that cheesy?" she teases. She's never clearly remembered what happened that day. She knows they're going to have to sit down and talk about it, but she's just not sure if now is anything but the worst possible time.

The Doctor's pout gets poutier, and more definite. "I'll have you know, my lines were perfectly acceptable under the circumstance!"

"What'd you say to get me to see sense?" she insists.

"IthinkyouneedaDoctor," he mutters.

She blinks at him. Did he... no. "Did you just say..."

"I think you need a Doctor," he repeats, enunciating each syllable very importantly, and as loudly as he can without drawing attention to them in the crowd.

She's going to keep that forever. It has to be the most, just, him thing he has ever said. She wants to tell him her heart is nearly exploding with how much she loves him right now. Instead, Rose just squeezes his hand tighter. "But you didn't kiss me." She says this because she's almost sure it's true, and if it isn't, it's not fair. She wants him to always kiss her if he's ever kissed her.

"I did so," he snarks. "See, this is why I resent this ending. He gets to look just like he did, only ginger. He gets to be ginger. He doesn't have to explain himself. He gets a new kiss for his new mouth. Me, I get frisked for a zipper."

Rose chuckles. "I didn't frisk you," she says. "I just asked."

"Bet you did frisk me while I was unconscious - which is another thing."

"Nope," she says, and doesn't add just stripped you naked and stuffed you into stripy pajamas, that's totally different. She's trying not to say that out loud, while she can't help but think it, which is why what she says next comes out flirty and a bit too sexy for her usual tone. "If I frisked you, you'd remember it," she promises.

The Doctor gives her that look again, the one he's had ever since she put on this dress, maybe the one he's been hiding even before this. "Oh," he says softly.

"Just like I know you didn't kiss me," she says. "I'd remember; there'd be no way in hell I'd forget."

"Really," the Doctor insists, "I really did kiss you. You forgot, that's never my fault."

"I don't think you did," Rose denies. She doesn't even know what she's doing now, except playing with fire and loving the burn.

"I did kiss you!" the Doctor asserts, and the next thing Rose knows, he's close enough for her to count his eyelashes. She licks her lip, can't help it. The Doctor's words feather and burn across her mouth as he whispers, "Just like this."

The Time Lord's kiss is deep and firm and passionate, the kind of kiss Rose has been waiting for not just since she met him, but her whole life. She opens for him like a blossom, and he invades her mouth with that talented tongue and a familiarity that feels like he learned to kiss from her lips. He moves and she moves with them, and its obvious neither of them ever want this moment to end. Not ever.

The flame-font credits spiral off the screen, and it fades to black, and still the lovers share this eager moment. More words blaze across the screen, no idea how very appropriate they are before the chiming, inevitable Tinkerbell spells them away.

_"It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -Walt Disney"_

And still the lovers love on.


End file.
